


Listening to the wind of change

by LittleTurtle95



Series: You only live once (but do you?) [6]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 1910s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Needs A Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gay Pride, Heartwarming, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Modern Era, Non Canonical Immortal, Richie Tozier is a Good Significant Other, Time Skips, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25574800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleTurtle95/pseuds/LittleTurtle95
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak is a sixteen years old boy living in Munich in 1912. He has a breathing condition, an overbearing mother, and, most importantly, he likes other boys.Eddie Kaspbrak knows the world is not made for people like him, and the world reminds him that pretty often.He is confident that this is not going to change, and even if it is, he knows he’ll never live long enough to see it with his own eyes, so he doesn’t even bother to hope he will.Then immortality enters in the picture.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: You only live once (but do you?) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843612
Comments: 14
Kudos: 67





	Listening to the wind of change

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Immortal!Losers series the sets in various points in history. You don't have to read the other parts to understand what's happening, but it would help with the context, so I recommend it.

**_Change_ ** _, /tʃeɪn(d)ʒ/, verb:_

_ > to make different in some particular, to alter; _

_ > to make radically different, to transform. _

_noun:_

_ > the act, process, or result of changing such as alteration, transformation, substitution; _

_ > a fresh set of clothes. _

* * *

**1912.**

“So, when are you going to find a good girl and get settled?”

“Oh my God, ma! Do you really have to bring this up every day?”

“You’re sixteen now, sweetie. What would people think if you keep letting down every girl that talks to you?”

 _Probably the truth,_ Eddie thought bitterly.

“I don’t care about what they think. I don’t care about them at all.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Sonja sounded sad now. Eddie hated her. He hated her when she was sorry for him, when she was scared for him, when she was sad. He hated her all the time. “You know what happened to that Jung guy, right?” 

Eddie felt his lungs close up like every time he thought about it. He had a breathing condition, and his mother always managed to make it worse. “Yes, I know what happened to him. He’s my friend.”

The face his mother made was worth all the struggle he was having. Making her angry was still better than her usual unnerved self. “Your _friend_? You can’t have people like _him_ as friends! The neighbors will talk even more! They’ll hit you like they did to him! You’re fragile honey, you wouldn’t survive something like that.”

Eddie knew Sonja was right. He wouldn’t have survived something like that. His neighbours had caught Gerard staring more than what they thought was necessary and misinterpreted his intentions – okay, maybe interpreted them correctly if Eddie knew Gerard, and he did – and beat him up until he had almost bled out on the street.

“Just leave me alone, ma. I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, clearing his throat.

Sonja froze, and Eddie knew in that moment he had done a huge mistake. “Eddie, you’re wheezing again. We need to make you see the doctor.”

“I’m fine. I breathe fine. Everything’s fine.”

“It’s not fine sweetie, you know that…”

Eddie let Sonja talk and talk and talk, but he soon stopped listening. He didn’t want to go see the doctor. Doctors couldn’t help him, because there was nothing wrong with him. He just had to stay calm and pace his breath. 

He didn’t like doctors, he despised them. One of the most famous doctors the news talked a lot about was Eugen Steinach, a new star in the medicine field who believed genital transplants on humans could cure what he called _‘sexual deviations’_. 

Sonja liked to buy medicine journals, she was obsessed with them, and Eddie read them from time to time, when sometimes he feared she could be right and there really was something wrong with him after all.

His mother loved doctor Steinach. Everybody loved him.

That’s why Eddie knew this world wasn’t made for him, because scientific journals talked about a long list of diseases he didn’t have but his mother thought he did and only one disease he had but he didn’t want to get rid of, and he wasn’t even sure it could be called _disease_ at all.

 _Maybe they’re right,_ he thought, looking down at the words on the paper. _Maybe I should go see the doctor, maybe I can be fixed._

The thought of having a transplant and then starting to get all hot and bothered for girls walking on the street made him sick to his stomach.

No, this world wasn’t made for him at all.

**1943.**

_Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung._ _Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion._

He took the file in his hands and looked at all the names and pictures on the paper. 

“There’s… there’s a lot of them.”

“I know, _Obersturmführer._ This town is full of degenerates these days. You kill one and two more pop up. It’s unbelievable.”

“They really are everywhere, huh?” Eddie whispered dryly, more like he was thinking out loud. He fidgeted with the red armband with the swastika he had on his uniform, resisting the huge to rip it off. 

He hated all of this, he hated he had to pretend to agree to all this, but he had to keep going. He had to keep going because this helped people. He was a spy in the Reich’s _Sicherheitsdienst_ , his job was to coordinate the investigation squad in charge of looking for the enemies of the state – Jews, homosexuals, communists, Roma people – , something that he despised with every fiber of his being but also let him sabotage the plans of the Reich with relative ease.

“What do you want us to do, sir? We have to follow all these cases?”

“No,” Eddie sighed. “No, I’ll… I’ll analyse the file and I’ll send you the names you’ll have to look for tomorrow morning.”

“Yes sir,” the man replied instantly, after a small nod. 

“You’re free to go now, I’m going to start working on this immediately.”

“Yes sir, thanks sir,” the man tensed, rising his right arm. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler,” Eddie said back, keeping his voice steady. He always did, he had to.

As soon as the man was out of the room he covered his face with his hands and sighed, sinking deeper in the chair he was sitting on. 

“Fuck,” he groaned, looking down at the file on the desk with the almost irresistible urge to throw it in the fireplace. “Fuck.”

He knew what he had to do. He had to read all those files and choose, choose who to sacrifice for the sake his cover. He was going to save some of them – most of them, hopefully – and send the others straight to hell. 

Every time a file like that appeared on his desk he was terrified he would find Richie’s face and name on it. He didn’t know why, he knew Richie couldn’t die just like any of them, and he knew he could easily make his file disappear like he had already done for Mike and Stan a while ago, but the idea that his sadistic colleagues could have noticed him and reported him made his skin crawl. 

He opened the file again and started reading, his soul tearing apart like every other time.

This world wasn’t made for him, and he thought that maybe it was never going to be.

**2017.**

“Where are we going Rich? Come on, you can tell me now!”

“It’s a surprise!”

“Should I be worried? I want to know in advance if I should be worried.”

Richie grinned. “You know you always have to worry when I’m involved!”

“Okay, now I am terrified.”

The boy laughed and took his hand with a wide smile. “Joking! You’re going to _love_ it Eds! Almost as much as you love me!”

“Not much then,” Eddie said, but he was clearly trying to fight back a smile. “And don’t call me Eds.”

“Your words can’t hurt me because I know they’re lies,” Richie said with a shrug, pulling him towards the train. They were currently settled in Milan, Bill had some issues with one of the businesses he had in town and they had all followed him like they always did. They didn’t belong anywhere if not with each other anymore, and what they did – fight the baddies without the fear of getting killed – could be done everywhere.

“Biglietti prego,” _tickets please,_ a woman asked them train, Richie showed her and they got on the train.

Eddie looked at one of the screens near the automatic doors and gasped. “Berlin? We’re going to _Berlin_? Why?”

Richie kept the smile on his face and shrugged, but didn’t give him an answer. “I told you, it’s a surprise.”

Last time Eddie had been in his home country the war wasn’t over yet and they were having one of the worst time of their lives, fighting to help people get away with fake IDs. Eddie was a _Sicherheitsdienst_ agent at the time, stealing documents and getting rid of files of the suspects he wanted to protect.

He hadn’t wanted to go back there ever since. It hurted too much, too many memories that made him feel unwanted, unsafe. 

He didn’t mind it, really. None of them belonged to any place now, they only belonged to each other. He didn’t need a home. Richie was his home, the other Losers were.

“Richie, I don’t think-”

“Shush, I know what I’m doing.”

“Are you su-”

“Do you trust me?” he asked, holding out his hand to him. 

Eddie hesitated for a moment. They exchanged a look, Richie’s eyes were confident and unwavering. Eddie sighed and finally took his hand, letting Richie pull him down on the seat. “Always.”

As soon as they arrived and got off the train Eddie immediately noticed something was going on. It was subtle at first, like a guy with dyed hair and a pansexual pin on his leather jacket,or a woman with a flower crown, then it started to become more obvious: two girls holding hands, one with a rainbow painted face, or a group of friends taking a rainbow flag from a bag.

It was raining and Richie took a rainbow umbrella from his backpack, one that Eddie had never seen before. He held it with one hand and and pulled him closer with the other. “Let’s go.”

Eddie was starting to be really confused. The weather apparently didn’t stop the people from crowding Platz der Republik, the Square in front of the Reichstag building, the seat of the German government. They looked like they were celebrating something.

“What is this? Is it pride? You took me to pride?” Eddie asked, he didn’t know how he felt about it.

He and Richie had already gone to pride before, they were even there for the very first one back in 1969, but always in other countries. Being there with Richie, seeing everything so different from how it was back then was starting to get to him.

“Not exactly,” Richie said, looking at the people hugging, kissing and partying. 

Eddie saw a few people drinking from a champagne bottle, despite being still late morning. Two women near them were crying, hugging close.

“ _Not exactly_? What do you mean? What’s happening?” 

Richie took his phone from his pocket, typed briefly on the screen and then showed him.

It felt like someone had just thrown a bucket full of freezing water at him. 

**_Germany's Bundestag passes bill on same-sex marriage._ **

_Homosexual couples in Germany will now be able to marry and adopt children under a new law passed by parliament. The move brings Germany into line with several other European countries._

_The German parliament, or Bundestag, passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriages in a snap vote that made it onto the agenda before the summer break after a surprise shift by Chancellor Angela Merkel. The bill passed by 393 to 226, with four abstentions._

Eddie’s breath itched. He stared down at the screen, then looked up at Richie, then down at the screen again. 

Richie was smirking, waiting patiently for him to digest what he just read. 

“Is this… is this for real?”

“I don’t know Eds, what do you say?” he asked, gesturing at all the people around them. The place was becoming more and more crowded by the second, pride flags and an explosion of colours everywhere he looked. “It looks pretty real to me.”

“Oh, Gott,” _oh God_ , Eddie whispered, the sudden lump in his throat already closing his lungs. “Richie, oh my God.”

“I know baby. I know,” he said, and held him as Eddie broke out in tears on his shoulder. 

“I can’t… I can’t…” he clung to him tighter, soaking his shirt, but he couldn’t care less. “Oh my God.”

Everything felt just so surreal.

Relief. Shock. Panic. Joy. Melancholy. Everything was pushing his chest like a ton of weight he was afraid his ribs were going to break. The only thing keeping him grounded now was Richie’s grip on him, his arm around his waist and his now wet shoulder pressed to his face.

Richie stroke his hair gently, and when Eddie started to shake in his arms he kissed his temple and whispered in amusement, “Are you laughing or crying now?”

The whimper he got in response sounded a lot like ‘ _both’._

The two middle aged women that were crying together a few moments before didn’t have an umbrella, their clothes were drenched in water and champagne. One of them looked at Eddie and her eyes lingered on his shaky form for a moment, then she looked up at Richie and smiled. “Verstehe. Wir haben lange genug auf das hier gewartet, richtig?” _I get it. We’ve waited long enough for this, right?_

“Du hast keine Ahnung,” _you have no idea,_ Richie said, feeling Eddie’s breath was starting to calm down. 

“We’ve been together for twenty years,” the woman said, “twenty one in a month. We were starting to lose hope, you know.”

Richie scoffed. “Oh, trust me… I _really_ know how you feel,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to Eddie’s hair. He felt more than he heard him sighing and then pushing him lightly, so Richie let him go.

“Sorry madam,” said Eddie, wiping off the tears with his sleeve. He was beaming. “Do you… do you want our umbrella? You’re getting all wet.”

“Nah, we don’t mind. Besides, it’s always refreshing to see young couples so passionate about those things.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Richie. “We’ve been together for one hundred and three years now.”

Eddie nudged him on the ribs. “Forgive him, he likes to joke around. Well, i’s been a pleasure!”

“Hey, I-” Richie tried to protest, but Eddie was pulling him away, the women looking at them in confusion as they walked.

“Are you insane??” he asked when they were far enough, but the playful smile on his lips and his still teary eyes betrayed how he was really feeling.

“Have been for a while now, but thanks for noticing!”

“How did you know? How did you know this was happening?”

“When you went buy groceries with Mike the other day I’ve heard it on the news and asked Bill if we could take the day off.”

“Everything we did... everything we saw... every time we had to bear this weight... I don’t... I don’t even know what to say. It was worth it. We made it, it was all worth it. I can’t...” his breath was fast again, he felt like before his first death, when he was sick and couldn’t breathe, but this time it was different. It was addictive, wonderful, he was drowning into it. “Rich, I don’t even know what to say.”

His heart was racing in his chest and he felt his mind dizzy. The noise, the brightness of the colours around them, the feelings screaming inside him were overwhelming. His cheeks felt hot and he was sure there were still half dry tears on them.

“You don’t have to say anything, then,” Richie said with a shrug. He closed his umbrella and let the rain fall on them, soaking them wet. “Here, now no one will know you were crying.”

Eddie closed his eyes and tilted his head back, feeling the rain drops washing his face, enjoying the sensation and letting everything that was happening settle inside him. Richie’s hands cupped his chin and suddenly he felt a brief press on his lips, a feather light kiss. 

When the press was gone he opened his eyes and looked at him. His glasses were all wet and he was blinking fast, clearly struggling to clear his vision. It was a rather funny sight, and Eddie had never felt more in love.

“God, you’re so… you’re…”

“Dumb?” Richie asked, laughing, “I know.”

“Perfect. And I love you more than I’ll ever be able to explain and… thank you.”

Richie passed his arm around his shoulders and made their foreheads touch, holding him closer. “Anything for you Eds, you know it.”

All around them everyone was happy and in love.

Maybe this world was made for Eddie Kaspbrak, after all. And it was them who made it that way. 

**Author's Note:**

> History notes:
> 
> Eugen Steinach was a popular Austrian physiologist who influenced Austrian, German and Polish views of gender studies between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. He practiced genital transplants on animals to study their repercussions on their sexual behaviour and theorised the same for humans, claiming that could be used to fix ‘sexual invertions’ as homosexuality and bisexuality.
> 
> The Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion was the collection of data that allowed the Reichszentrale to coordinate and begin the persecution and punishment of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. In order to do this, it had at its disposal special mobile squads, which also could carry out executions.
> 
> 31/06/2017 the German Bundestag approved a bill for legalisation of gay marriage and adoptions. It was signed into law on 20 July by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and published in the Federal Law Gazette on 28 July 2017.
> 
> So... 
> 
> I apparently cannot let this AU go 🙈 what do you think? Is gay marriage legal in your country? Do you remember what you did and where you were when it happened?  
> Kudos and comments always appreciated!
> 
> For the ones who follow the whole series: no I haven’t forgot about Georgie, don’t worry n.n I have plans for him.


End file.
